Before Installing Stillen Supercharger
 

Hi guys, I want to get some input on my setup before I supercharge:
2016 24k miles Base

FI Cat Back Exhaust (Non-resonated)
FI Resonated Test Pipes
34 row Oil Cooler Kit
FI 7AT Billet Aluminum Flex Plate
Stillen Transmission Cooler Kit

I will get a UpRev tune when I get the supercharger installed. This should also help with the transmission.

thanks

Looks pretty good to me.
I have been running the Stillen with TopgunZ's air to air upgrade with pretty much same set up. I'm just running HF cats, and stock flex plate. No problems in over six months.

:tup:

OP, do this.

Where can I get the upgrade? Do I need to message Topgunz?

yup. This should be a mandatory mod. And also TBatt's belt slip mod.

Sounds good man!

I am about 98% done with my build, pending tune, and then I will be adding the oil cooler and the CJM baffled oil pan per recommendation from here.

Definitely go with Topgunz Air-air setup! If you do the install yourself, it adds almost no time to it since you're hooking up and setting up all of the water stuff. TBatt's extra pulley mod adds about 2 minutes to install and eliminates the belt slip up high.

The only downside to the above things: If you are buying a new Stillen kit and that is all that you want for awhile, then I wouldn't recommend the air-air and the extra pulley yet since your kit new comes with a warranty that gets voided as soon as you modify it. I picked my kit up secondhand, so I wasn't really concerned about that aspect. That is the ONLY downside to the above mods.

Down the line if you want more power, you'll want to upgrade your injectors and potentially your fuel system.

Many folks might push you towards ecutek for the tune. I had Uprev for my NA tune and I switched to ecutek for my current tune.

If you'd have only started this sooner! Haha. I was just in Carrollton visiting my family for a week and I woulda loved to come help out a little!

Good luck man!

-Brett

See, here's the thing with the Stillen warranty. It requires you to use everything as it comes out of the box, and their tune is a ******* disaster. Not to mention the MAF being pre-intercooler. So if you keep the kit stock, you get to keep the warranty, but you're far, far more likely to use it. If you ditch the water-to-air setup and get a good tune, you lose the warranty but are much less likely to need it anyway.

:tup:


Going up a size on injector and switching to Ecutek at the beginning saves you the re-tune when you inevitably want more out of it.

Thanks everyone for your inputs. I am probably going to stick with the stock Stillen Surpercharger but might go with the EcuTek tune. I will add the A2A and idler pulley if I want more power later down the road.


I learned from reading on other forums that the belt slippage occurs when upgrading to the 9lb pulley, right? So with the stock, there should be little to no slippage? I am guess the purpose of the idler pulley y'all recommend was to prevent slippage?

Thanks again

Your dollar per horsepower is going to be insanely high with the stillen kit with warranty. To keep the warranty you have to keep the tune they send which like Chuck said is complete garbage. There were guys making a whopping 75 more hp with that setup. You can get that from just adding breathing mods and re-tune! Not to mention the driveability of that tune. Limp, hesitant, known to be unsafe. Yes it will feel like a more powerful car with just the stillen out of the box setup. But the HP and fun factor you are leaving on the table is wildly illogical.

You stand an exponentially higher chance of blowing your car up with the stock Stillen setup. If you can't afford to put on the A2A setup up front, you can't afford to fix the damage down the line from not having it.

You might keep your Stillen warranty this way, but when the bad design and garbage tune blow your motor up you can be assured Nissan will not be coming to your rescue.

Heed the advice of this forum, if you are going to go FI with the Stillen kit do it properly. Research more on the flaws of this kit and you will be horrified that so many people are running it in the out-of-the-box state.

I honestly don't know why anyone on this forum would run this kit that way, having gotten all the information.

:iagree:

It's a massively compromised setup out of the box. There are tons of motor failures with it the way they designed it, and I'm genuinely surprised there aren't more.

Also, go with a remote tune from Sebastian at Specialty Z. He is making the best tunes for the kit that will get the car started then will make the best power in the safest manner. Guys praise his tunes and I have never heard of a single complaint.

He somehow got 480whp out of a stillen kit with my A2A kit and zero upgrades. 8psi pulley.

Thanks a lot guys, now y'all are making me 2nd guess myself. Is the Stillen Supercharger kit really that bad? Majority of the forum that is having issues with this kit are the ones that add modifications to it (9lb pulley or trying to achieve higher HP, tune ups). Really haven't found anyone having issue with the stock one. (Must not looked hard enough)

I see majority of the people with GTM chargers (Turbo or Super) replying to this forum. How well would the GTM Supercharger Stage 2 work with my current setup? The GTM is intimidating with the amount of HP is produces and sounds like it would do more damage then the Stillen.

Also TopgunZ, why stick with the Stillen Supercharger? Just curious.

Stillen is that bad. The only part of the kit worth a damn is the blower and bracket. There's lots of stories of people blowing a motor on a stock Stillen kit with their ******** tune. GTM is no more. They are Gamma now. They bought everything from GTM at the bankruptcy garage sale. It's a better designed system than the Stillen kit.

The incorrect assumption you are making is that all the kits are well designed, and that the risk of damage only goes up with power levels.

Here is a fun nugget, one of the major factors that your ECU uses to control ignition timing and fueling is the temperature of the air going inside of it. On the Z, that temperature is taken at the MAF sensors. On the Stillen kit, those MAF sensors are before the SC compresses the air. If you've ever taken a rudimentary chemistry course, you'll know that pressurizing the air is going to heat it proportionally. Of course, the ECU has no idea that the air temperature has been raised... so how do you tune it to provide the proper fuel ratio and ignition timing? You take a guess, cross your fingers, and pray. Does that sound like a good idea to you?

I'd recommend you do a lot more research before pulling the trigger on an FI setup.

Heed the advice of the experienced members on this forum and you will have a safer, more powerful, and more reliable setup.

The stillen kit can ultimately make more power than the Gamma. But it will end up costing more as well. Im not saying stick to the stillen kit. Im saying I personally wouldnt run the kit with the way it comes out of the box.

Stillen has sold an insane amount of these kits and i think there are plenty of satisfied customers out there.These customers however dont know what they are missing out on and that they could have pretty much reached that goal with breather mods.

I also think the stillen kit is somewhat safe if you are ok paying 8K for a kit/install that nets 75-100 hp. There is no way of knowing what percent of guys have problems if you leave the kit in factory form, but I would imagine it is pretty low. Now the guys trying to push the kit over 4xx+whp while leaving the cooling the same, they have LOTS of problems.

You will want more power down the road no matter what supercharger you buy (thats currently on the market)

My best advice is get the BP kit with the comp oiless turbo. That is if your Manual, if your AT your Ef'd.

:iagree: spot on!
I would never have installed the Stillen SC before the air to air upgrade was offered.

This is the unfortunate truth. And you can buy the blower from Vortech.

Once you have rebuilt the kit to take the stock VHR motor to its reliable boosted limits, you will have replaced literally every other part of the kit. Ideally, you want your upgrade path to require as little replacing of components as possible, and this kit pretty much delivers the opposite.

Maybe one day Stillen will allow us to just buy the bracket from them - but even then the positioning of the SC is not all that great.

Or maybe one day Ill just bring a new supercharger kit to the forum that costs less than the stillen and makes gobs of power safely. :tup:

Yeah but it doesn't require a sweet hood that everyone is excited about despite not knowing what it will look like.... so :shakes head:

:happydance:

I can make it require a hood, front bumper, rear bumper and side skirts. If only I knew how to mold fiberglass....

:icon18::icon18:

As far as the gamma/GTM kit ... it's a really good setup for a supercharger out of the box and easily upgraded ... I have zero issues from mine going 2 years now ... only bad thing was the reputation of GTM before gamma took over but I think gamma is doing better now

Nothing wrong with that. Ecutek is probably the most important upgrade, and then there are numerous others from there in terms of both safety and performance.

Seb is definitely the man for tuning these things.

OP, I was like you at first and was just going to go with the stock Stillen setup. Man, am I glad these guys talked me out of it.

The Stillen tune I had was, how should I say this.......TERRIBLE. What a POS tune! The car was barely drivable. I turned the tune over to Sebastian at SpecialtyZ and WOW, what a difference!

The TopZ A2A kit I installed made a huge difference in intake charge cooling. Because I was doing a remote tune with Seb, I got to see first hand what was going on with the timing, injector duty cycle and intake temps. You could see the cooling of the A2A system working and NEVER having a heat soak issue.

Learn from what we have figured out and you WILL be a happy guy!

Alright thanks a lot everyone. After reading post about how Sam/GTM and Gamma were scamming people and vendor, I decided to stick with the Stillen.

Going to get the Stillen Supgercharger with TopgunZ's A2A kit and have a custom tune done by a local shop in Texas (JoTech). I will get the supercharger tuner kit without there tune.

Gamma never scammed anyone, to my knowledge. I don't want to dirty up this thread going off on that tangent, but feel free to PM me if you want more on the Gamma/GTM story.

I think you've made a great choice with Stillen+A2A+tune. Good luck, get a build thread started when the parts start rolling in!

Felors way to give in to peer pressure lol. JK....

These guys know what they are talking about. They guided many of us in the right direction to happiness. They are looking out for us and i can't thank them enough. You should also look into CJ motorsports fuel system down the road and talk to Tbatt about his upgraded pully kit both are a must. Good luck on your build!! :driving:

Is upgrading the flex plate (7AT) necessary when supercharging?

It's not a bad idea, but it's going to add significantly to your labor costs.

Yea that's what i figured and the flex plate itself is pretty expensive.

Any thoughts on Exedy Technics Automatic Transmission Sports Clutch Set - for 7AT.

Trying to beef up my transmission.

If you want to beef up the 7AT, talk to Fast Intentions or Level 10. Although, it's probably not as necessary with a supercharger as it would be with a turbo. If I had an auto and was doing your build, I'd set aside the cash for a built transmission and wait until the stock one pops.

Honestly, since you're starting with a base Z, I'd consider brakes and LSD to be more pressing needs than the tranny.

The key to AT life is mostly in the tune. I know people that have had their AT's blow on them on the dyno because the tuner has no idea what he is doing with line pressure and such. The guy local to me lost his tranny at 320wtq because the tuner was ignorant.

Sebs (sebastian from Specialty Z) says he can reliably tune way past 450wtq. and he does all day long. The tune will make or break your system.

GET A GOOD TUNER!.....Just use sebs.

This is exactly what I am doing. I didn't see anything about transmission stuff on the FI website other than the flexplate. I know that Level Ten advertises a tranny built to 700+ hp for close to 5k. Hopefully mine doesn't give too soon...

What is the purpose of the TBatt idler pulley? Someone was recommending it too.

To reduce or eliminate serp belt slip. I have one and it's done the trick.

I think i remember reading that the slippage occurs when you upgrade to a 9lb pulley, right? The stock one is 8lb.

Slippage will still occur with the stock 8lb pulley. "Coincidentally" it seems to happen around the time the SC peaks out at 8psi. With the TBatt extra idler that eliminates the slip, I believe folks are seeing near, if not above, 9lbs on the stock pulley. Once I've resolved my injector issue, I'll let you know.

Has anybody here built their own kit? I was in the process of rebuilding a V3, going to get the air-air, called stillen but they won't let me order the SC mounting bracket or manifold. Seeing if there are any recommendations locally for someone to make a mounting bracket, but what about the manifold as well?